gloomy feelings, or sank, in spite of the unsensual tendency of the ascetic principle, into the coarsest anthropomorphism and image worship. When the religious enthusiasm faltered or ceased, the cloister life, like the hermit life, became the most spiritless and tedious routine, or hypocritically practised secret vices. For the monks carried with them into their solitude their most dangerous enemy in their hearts, and there often endured mnch fiercer conflicts with flesh and blood, than amidst the society of men. The temj^tations of sensuality, pride, and ambition external- ized and personified themselves to the anchorets and monks in hellish shapes, which appeared in visions and dreams, now in pleasing and seductive, now in threatening and terrible forms and colors, according to the state of mind at the time. The monastic imagination peopled the deserts and solitudes with the very worst society, with swarms of wanged demons and all kinds of hellish monsters.' It substituted thus a new kind of polytheism for the heathen gods, which were generally sup- posed to be evil spirits. The monastic demonology and demon- omachy is a strange mixture of gross superstitions and deep spiritual experiences; It forms the romantic shady side of the otherwise so tedious monotony of the secluded life, and contains much material for the history of ethics, psychology, and pa- thology. Especially besetting were the temptations of sensuality, and ■ According to a sensuous and local conception of Eph. vi. 12 : Ta ■rrvtvfj.aTiKci TTJs irovripias iv roh iirovpavlots ; " die boseu Geisler unter dem Himmcl " (evil spirits under heaven), as Luther translates ; while the Vulgate gives it literally, but some- what obscurely : " Spiritualia nequitise in ccelestibus ; " and the English Bible quite too freely ; " Spiritual wickedness in high places." In any case Trvevfj-artKa. is to be taken in a much wider sense than iri/eu^ara or Saijuoria ; . and iiruvpavia, also, is not fully identical with the cloud heaven or the atmosphere, and besides admits a differ- ent construction, so that many put a comma after irov-nplus. The monastic satanology and demonology, we may remark, was universally received in the ancient church and throughout the middle age. And it is well known that Luther retained from his monastic life a sensuous, materialistic idea of the devil and of his influence on men. <:t-«<,^**-»W' § 32. LIGHTS AND SHADES OF MONASTIC LIFE. 171 irresistible without the utmost exertion and constant watchful- ness. The same saints, who could not conceive of true chastity without celibacy, were disturbed, according to their own con- fession, by unchaste dreams, which at least defiled the imagi- nation,' Excessive asceticism sometimes turned into unnatu- ral vice ; sometimes ended in madness, despair, and suicide. Pachomins tells us, so early as his day, that many monks cast themselves down precipices, others ripped themselves up, and others put themselves to death in other ways,^ A characteristic trait of monasticism in all its forms is a morbid aversion to female society and a